Bug Dome / the WEAK!

Inspired by insects, the Bug Dome is a small sheltered area used during the SZHK Biennale for underground bands, poetry reading, and discussions, and after the Biennale as an un-official gathering place for illegal workers from the Chinese countryside. Built on a wasteland of a ruined building site in-between the Shenzhen City Hall and an illegal workers camp, the structure is intended to reveal the connection we share with nature: ”In large scale, if we learn to understand the connection what the hundreds of millions of hands that are now migrating from the rural China to the modern cities might bring along them, we might be able to ruin the industrial city. We might be able to make the city to be part of nature.”

“The design process was painful. We were all ripping the design to all three individual directions but in the end we gave up and the design became the boss and we learned to listen. Architecture gives the commands and architects listen,” explained Marco Casagrande, Hsieh Ying-chun and Roan Ching-yueh who make up WEAK!

The building is made of bamboo and was adapted to meet the site-specific conditions. Inside the cocoon, “a weak retreat for the modern man to escape from the strength of the exploding urbanism”, a small area allows people to come together, and a space to share a fire is also provided.